Case study:

Overview

Remote Controlled Lighting (RCL) are an established name in the lighting industry and are proud to be the world’s only specialist remote-controlled spotlight design and manufacturing company. Their patented technology enables spotlights to be situated on high ceilings and other inaccessible sites but operated from floor level with a simple handheld remote. Their uncomplicated and effective solution has been implemented around the world, and RCL have seen more than 75,000 fixtures installed to date.

As a growing company, with a number of new launches, RCL’s product data was becoming unwieldy and difficult to manage. Vast amounts of information were stored in multiple locations with much of it living in an enormous Excel spreadsheet. RCL needed to collate data from different departments in different locations, with much of it initially inaccessible between different departments.

Product identification headaches

One of the biggest issues RCL faced was keeping on top of updated product data. Every time a product was updated – and this happens frequently in the lighting industry – the product data, and public material relying on that data, had to be updated with new version numbers allocated to revised datasheets. With thousands of product variations, managing this system became a logistical nightmare.

RCL’s in-house, marketing team, responsible for creating product data sheets for all of the company’s offerings, were spending the majority of their time originating new or updated data sheets from manual requests. The time-consuming process involved the information being worked on in a graphic design programme and a PDF then created, and uploaded to the RCL website. Any small change, error or update had to go through the whole system again and a new PDF generated and distributed.

“Now editing product information is simple”

James CurtisMarketing Manager

Introducing Libris PIM to RCL

We spoke to RCL when they were compiling a huge Excel file that would serve as a central data repository and were looking at ways to automate their use of spreadsheets and save time on repetitive tasks. Their marketing department also wanted to be able to feed information directly from the database to their web development and in-house marketing teams.

We explained how our PIM system could do all of this and more. Its automatic export of data to multiple channels from a single web-based user interface dramatically cuts down time spent updating information in multiple locations. New product data sheets no longer need to be generated from scratch every time there’s a change or update, an improvement that enables RCL’s marketing team to use their skills working on new materials instead of endlessly updating and remaking PDF datasheets.

Technical, product and marketing teams can make changes directly onto data sheets and elsewhere, with the relevant permissions, ensuring that the latest information is always available in the central store.

Key benefits

Huge time savings are generated across multiple departments, especially design

Cuts time spent on repetitive tasks

Product info can be updated live and in real time

Information can be imported from existing Excel spreadsheets

Intelligent working….

Since introducing Libris Systems PIM to RCL in 2016, RCL have made massive improvements to their marketing activities. James Curtis, Marketing Manager, for RCL, stressed how the introduction of the Libris PIM system, “helped to refocus RCL’s resource allocation”.

“For a long time, with our growing portfolio and a new range of innovations meaning additional variants, we were committing large amounts of time in generating or editing product datasheets manually. Now that both datasheets and the website are based on the same data source, editing product information is simple. The speed and convenience of editing product information means we can provide the reassurance to our clients that as we update our products, our product data is up-to-date, and easily accessible.

Now that we’re no longer spending large amounts of time re-generating datatsheets, we’ve started to look at how we can further use this centralised data source for new communication materials, and we look forward to working with Libris on these new tools.”